Michael Lejeune, Metro Design Studio, Los Angeles

Michael Lejeune is charged with “making public transportation cool,” a not-so-easy task in the car culture of sprawling Los Angeles. As creative director of LA Metro, Lejeune heads a studio with a staff of more than 20, applying design strategy and thinking to the nation’s third largest transit agency, which serves some 1.5 million people each day. Their projects, ranging from wayfinding systems, schedules, and maps to vehicle identity graphics and advertising campaigns to promote ridership, have been honored with more than 80 awards. This mix of consistent design standards, commonsense approaches to complex information, and engaging communications strategies has made LA Metro a standout in the public sector for embracing design and the capabilities of in-house teams.